


The Fortress and the Mountain Ridge

by whereismygarden



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Drabble Collection, Episode Tag, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-17 04:26:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2296595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/pseuds/whereismygarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Possible missing pieces and hidden moments from throughout the series, as I watch it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wild Unrest

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was written about two episodes before "Meridian."

                The grey walls of his office are covered in maps and pictures and hooks with old and new things, but they are still grey. The room is artificially cooled, and sometimes Daniel imagines the miles of piping and tubing and the gradients of filters that separate him from the air outside the base. There are no windows and no sunlight. When he falls asleep here, he dreams of a desert he loves, of air dry and hot, of fearsome blue skies and ephemeral, movable dwellings. When the phone rings to wake him up, he thinks it is some child learning to play their older sibling’s flute. When someone else comes in to shake him awake, it is worse, because it is always Sha’re’s hand he feels, and her voice he hears.

                Stargate Command, with its carefully delineated corridors and containment rooms, is no place for all the ghosts Daniel must make room for, and so when his heart cannot contain them, he flees in dreams to Abydos. He thinks that Teal’c’s ghosts overflow into his candles, and Jack’s into his fishing lines, and Sam’s into the motorcycle engine she can never stop tinkering with.

                Daniel wakes dreaming in dead languages, to the sound of English and sirens, and his ghosts fade away to let him rise, and run deeper underground, forward to peace or vengeance.


	2. Grief Be Changed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ficlets for SG-1 centered around "Full Circle," "Fallen," and "Homecoming."

It turns Teal’c’s newly empty gut, putting this armor back on, and he feels the echo of his symbiote writhe within. Phantom pain, Dr. Fraiser tells him. The chain and plate give him a shade of the old, dark-gold power he wielded as the scourge and right hand of Apophis. He thinks maybe the Tau’ri are too quick to change and be changed, to accept the trappings of a power system they deny the rights of with every breath. But he dons his old armor anyway, for he knows and can endure the grinding ache of serving the greater good.

~

Jack wishes, sometimes, that he were a colder man. The kind of man Earth will need. Do they walk too far on the side of honor, when their enemies are gods and demons? Should he be more like Maybourne’s rebels, as cold as the Tok’ra? But he cannot change his human, personal biases, and there is never going to be a price for human life. There will never be a scale that can weigh any soul he knows. He unsticks the C4 from the round, innocuous-looking crystal. A glorified paperweight. He hands it over to the pale-eyed Jaffa without true hesitation.

~

Daniel came to Teal’c and Colonel O’Neill, Sam reflects, eyes scanning unseeing over her laptop. Not her, not when she was sobbing in her lab, sleepless with loss. They are friends, but he never came. Maybe because she has never been good enough at making the connections that he has with the colonel and Teal’c, maybe because she wasn’t dying or tortured. But there exists some depth she felt cheated of, to not see him after his Ascension, because—in amnesia—he mistook her for a lover. She’s never been so glad to have that question posed to her.

~

Jonas lurks, unsettled. Daniel is standing in their office, looking idly at some of his artifacts. Jonas made this space his, with his bright fish and weather maps, but now it is a cracking veneer for Daniel’s uncontainable self. This man that not even death holds, Jonas’s foremost hero. Daniel Jackson, sitting in his olive green and glasses, half-lost. Daniel Jackson, who reappeared in robes of sand and sky, like the Tau’ri Christ of the desert. Daniel’s office, Daniel’s people, Daniel’s place. Jonas can return to Kelowna, as he wants, but something small within him is being riven in regret.

~

Arram—Daniel—is having a hard time of this. His fingers turn the metal knobs of the shower with perfect muscle memory, but the hiss of water makes him wince. He wishes he could put on his robes, though this moss-green garment is soft. He stares at the picture of the dark-haired woman, wondering. She is dead, and in this, and in the hard lines of his friends’ faces, he knows that he will be piecing together a broken man, gluing Daniel together like a shattered cup, imperfect, spilling sorrow like water, like the finishing spray of an opening gateway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more Tennyson quotes as chapter titles.


	3. What Remains of Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nebulously set during early season 10. Daniel/Vala

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have really been liking Daniel and Vala, and I remembered something from very early in the show, where Daniel is describing how he fell in love with Sha're, and telling how she was the only one who refused to take him seriously. It helped me realize why I like Daniel/Vala so much.

                Daniel has been waiting a long time for this, it feels like, and he’s afraid. He’s not the man he once was. Not the man of ten years ago, or even three years ago. Maybe he should let his hair grow longer again. He knocks on the door to Vala’s quarters. Sam is in Washington for two days; Mitchell convinced Teal’c to go to a baseball game. He’s without backup or buffers.

                “Hello,” she sings out, and he steps inside. She’s been here just over a month, and her quarters have more decoration and personality to them than his do. Possibly more than his apartment does. She’s acquired posters somehow, and pieces of shimmery see-through cloth, tacked them onto the walls and draped them over the lamps. She sits cross-legged on the bed, eyebrows arched up expectantly at him.

                “Hey,” he says, glad she’s all the way dressed. Her dark hair is unbound, the glittery hair clips lying on the dark green bedspread. “Can we talk?” Somehow, she seems to sense his tension, and her face settles into sincerity as she nods slightly.

                He sits next to her, looks down at his folded hands. Vala doesn’t press him, simply waits, and he inhales, shifting through everything he wants to say. He doesn’t, generally, talk about himself except as a stepping-stone to facilitate a discussion, a desperate _I understand too_ before a weapon is fired.

                “I was married once,” he says. He glances over, but her face is neutral in response to this news. “Her name was Sha’re. We got married almost eleven years ago. We only had five months together before she was taken as a host.” Vala winces, frowning deeply, and he pauses, not sure what the best way to continue is. “I guess the story ends two years after that, when Amaunet almost killed me. Teal’c saved me, but Sha’re didn’t survive the wound.” He shifts on the bed, hunching forward, away from Vala’s eyes.

                “I’m sorry, Daniel,” she says, and he knows she is sincere. “That must have been very hard.”

                “Yes,” he says. “The thing is, I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately.” He clasps his hands together, looks over at her for a second. “I think it’s because of you.” There is a resounding silence for a long moment.

                “I don’t understand,” she says, and he feels her draw herself inward and stiffen at his side.

                “You remind me of her in some ways,” he replies. “Don’t think I’m trying to compare or anything, I really am not. But—well, I haven’t exactly been celibate in the eight years since her death.” His words are coming out not at all as he intended. Vala scoots closer to him.

                “Can’t really blame you for that one,” she says, a little of her jesting lightness in her voice.

                “Yes, well, the part that matters is that they were small affairs, things that meant a lot or a little and didn’t last and couldn’t last. I never felt the same way about anyone as I did about Sha’re.”

                “Okay,” she says, stressing the second syllable a bit, shifting next to him.

                “Well, until now,” he says, closing his throat around the shaking that suddenly entered his voice.

                “Daniel,” she says, voice deep, shocked, and he looks at her, spreading his hands as though to say, _Sorry about this._

                “You’re not like her, not in most ways. But the feeling—I haven’t—I almost didn’t remember how it felt.” Vala’s eyes are huge, shocked and a little frightened. “I know you flirt a lot with everyone, and I certainly can’t assume that you in any way reciprocate, but I wanted to be truthful about this—“

                “You don’t need to qualify or excuse your feelings, Daniel.” She puts her hand over his arm, leans against him so they touch from hip to shoulder, and turns her face into his shoulder. He covers her hand with his free one. “It’s a touch more honest than I’m used to being.”

                It’s not _me too_ but it’s not _no_ and that eases something in him.

                “Maybe I shouldn’t have led talking about my dead wife?” he says, weakly, but Vala rubs his arm.

                “You can always talk about Sha’re,” she says, fiercely. “You don’t have to hide your losses with me. I know how it is.”

                “Yeah,” he says, and maybe it’s okay that he’s not the man he was ten years ago. Perhaps he needn’t be that for Vala, who met him as soldier instead of diplomat.

                He’s exhausted, and she must be too, but they walk together to the mess for coffee, and then back to her quarters. Daniel leaves his boots and jacket by the door, and they lie on the bed, holding hands like teenagers, nothing more.

                “Will you explain these posters to me?” she asks, after he’s almost asleep on top of the rough bedspread. “Teal’c and Mitchell brought them.”

                “Well, Teal’c will know more, but that one is _Star Wars_ …”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title butchered from "In Memoriam" again. I already regret making this choice.
> 
> ETA: jossed by canon one day after I wrote this, I can't believe it.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from stanza LXXI of Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H."


End file.
